Orange County Commissioner and mayoral candidate Bill Segal believes that high school students ought to be given more options to learn marketable skills rather than feeling pressured to attend college. Segal was responding to a question in an exclusive interview with West Orlando News, of the perceived tension between Central Florida’s desire to target higher paying jobs, which assumes a higher-educated population, and the growing proportion of Florida students–35 percent in 2009–who have no college plans.
“I think we have imbued into our kids a little too much, they are not worthy if they don’t move on to college”, Segal said. “A lot of these students fall prey to these “for profit” colleges who basically load them up with huge student loans and don’t teach them a marketable skill. We need to give them (students) more vocational options, more apprenticeship programs because everybody has their own talents and frankly, certain people would be better off going that route. I think we have painted ourselves into a corner by telling all of these young people that, “you’ve got to go to college.”
Segal added, “Community college, nursing school, learning various trades may be the better route for a lot of people. So, I think we really need to re-evaluate that as a nation.”
Read more on Bill Segal’s responses on why the Board of Orange County Commissioners made the wrong call in voting down the multi-million dollar Innovation Way East project; revitalization of Pine Hills and plans for outreach to the African-American community, if elected the next Mayor of Orange County.
